WFUPholo
Dean Blake
Morant shakes
hands with Mayor
Allen Joines dur
ing the November
opening of the
Wake Forest
University
Community Law
& Business
Clinic. The clinic
is located in the
heart of down
town Winston
Salem.
Firsts
from page IS
"The acceptance of women had not
been full fledged," she related. "The
male counterparts were a little hesitant
(to work with female officers)."
Being African American also posed
a problem for her, said Norris, who
retired from the department last year
and now serves as chief of police at
Winston-Salem State University, her
alma mater.
"Sometimes I got criticized for
doing my job by arresting people who
looked like me, and sometimes I got
criticized for being too soft and not
arresting people who looked like me,"
she declared. "It was kind of hard to
please either side."
As chief, Norris says she was con
stantly bombarded with questions of
race from both black and white offi
cers. Consistency, she found, was the
remedy to most concerns about racial
bias.
Of the three, Blake Morant, dean of
Wake Forest School of Law, has the 1
distinction of breaking the glass ceil
ing most recently. Morant, the first
African American dean to lead the
School of Law, came to the private,
prominent university less than two
years ago.
Although 2008 may seem to some a
rather late date to be an African
American first, Morant counters that
many law schools have similar
employment records.
"It's a situation not uncommon in
legal education in a lot of schools," he
said. "Minorities are still a small per
centage of the entire (legal) academy."
While he admitted he was proud to
be the first African American to hold
such a post at the prestigious institu
tion, Morant says he hasn't had much
time to stop and. think about it.
at Norris greets guests at an awards banquet last year.
?"The expectations of a law school
dean ... are varied and very complicat
ed and diverse and demanding; it takes
a great deal of talent and skill," he
remarked. "Because of all the
demands (of the job), the race becomes
just one factor."
Morant concedes that there are
those who may not want to see a black
person in his position, yet he is a firm
believer that his work will speak for
itself in most instances.
"One of the things I've learned is
the alumni base always wants the
school to succeed," he stated. "I feel
that if I'm successful (in my job), then
the issue of my ethnicity becomes a
more minor one." *
WFU Phot*
Blake Morant
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